The January 2008 Web414 Meeting was held last night, and it was fun. Someone yesterday said it didn’t look like very interesting topics, but hey, it’s as interesting as you make it, I always say.
We had about 23 people in attendance, even with the snowy weather conditions. I think the community is really beginning to gel. We’ve got a lot of great people involved, doing a lot of really cool things, sharing their knowledge, working together, it’s a nerdy love-fest…
Jeramey showed off Greasemonkey, and showed how he uses it on Flickr. I mentioned the Greasemonkey script I wrote for WebGrader. (If you are unfamiliar, Greasemonkey basically lets you re-write web pages in your own browser, so you can add new features, or disable things you don’t like.)
Next up I demoed the Asus Eee PC, the little laptop that runs Linux. I showed the default interface, the full KDE Desktop running on it, Firefox, Penguin Racer, and Potato Guy, which was quite the hit. I then passed it around the room so everyone could get a chance to see how light and small it is, and give the keyboard a try. By the time I got it back, it was running Ubuntu and streaming video of the meeting. (I’m just kidding.)
There was some video streaming and such though… Thanks to Media Master Gabe for setting up Ustream (though it silently failed a bit, that’s ok, it was the first attempt.) Gabe and Tracy also showed off Seesmic and the silly video conversations they have there. (KeVroN missed it!)
Oh, and there are a ton of photos in Flickr’s Web414 pool thanks to Tracy Apps and John December.
And the Eee PC was not the only little Linux device, as Tracy brought a Chumby, but sadly, we could not get it on the wifi because we could not authenticate it to the network.
Elias Holman of Distance Software gave a “running a business” talk Pecha Kucha style, which involves showing 20 slides for 20 seconds each and talking over them. I thought it turned out really well, and we should consider the Pecha Kucha thing again.
Wait… more? Oh yeah, held a Book Swap & Loan, where people could bring in a book and let someone borrow it, or just give it away. Sadly, I brought like 80% of the books, but it looks like we just started a Web414 Library.